Don’t let the Florida Panthers’ NHL-best offense distract you from their top-five defense
The Florida Panthers are nearly a quarter of the way through the season and, quite frankly, it’s hard to pick out too many flaws.
The offense, understandably, gets most of the attention. They’re scoring more goals than anyone else in the NHL and entered Monday third in the league in shots on goal per game, with nine players sitting on at least 10 points and four of the top nine in plus-minus.
On its own, the offense would be good enough to make the Panthers at least a dark-horse contender for the Stanley Cup, but general manager Bill Zito and Co. didn’t want to just make Florida an offensive juggernaut. The Panthers have invested nearly as much in building an elite defense and, so far, the results are nearly as good: Only four teams have allowed fewer goals per game than Florida this season.
“We just try to skate a lot, be a team that the other team thinks is hard to play against,” rookie center Anton Lundell said. “All the five guys on ice are working together, and that makes our forecheck and defensive play really good.”
For the Panthers, defense has been a cohesive effort, too, going all the way from the wings back to the goaltender. Winger Anthony Duclair, for example, ranks in the top 15 among true forwards in defensive point shares, and injured superstar center Aleksander Barkov is the reigning Frank J. Selke Trophy winner. On defense, all three of Florida’s primary pairings — Aaron Ekblad and MacKenzie Weegar, Radko Gudas and Gustav Forsling, Kevin Connauton and Brandon Montour — have positive goal differentials with the Ekblad-Weegar pairing ranking among the best in the league. In goal, Sergei Bobrovsky is putting together by far his best season yet in Florida with rookie goaltender Spencer Knight rounding into form, too.
It all means the Panthers (13-2-3) are allowing only 2.50 goals per game, despite ranking in the bottom half of the league in goals against per game and expected goals against. Florida is far from perfect as a defensive team, but the offense controls so much possession and the goaltending has been so good it hasn’t mattered.
“They’ve controlled a big part of the game with the gaps and up ice,” interim coach Andrew Brunette said. “In the middle of the ice, I think we’ve been really tight. It’s been hard to get into our zone.”
The Panthers’ offense is defense
The possession numbers bear it out. The Panthers lead in the league in Corsi for percentage at 55.9 — meaning they’re taking 55.9 percent of all total shot attempts in 5-on-5 action this year — and rank in the top 10 in terms of allowing opposing shot attempts.
For Florida, the best defense has been elite offense, which has both let the Panthers play with a lead and simply limit opponents’ opportunities.
Panthers getting elite Sergei Bobrovsky
The reason for the relatively high number of expected goals against is the number of high-danger chances Florida is allowing. It’s one of the few obvious flaws so far: The Panthers have given up the ninth most 5-on-5 high-danger chances in the NHL this season, which teams typically convert into goals about 10-20 percent of the time. Bobrovsky, however, has stopped 92.6 percent of high-danger shots at 5-on-5 — the best mark in the league for goaltenders to play at least 400 minutes of 5-on-5 action so far this year.
Knight is rounding into form, too. After posting a meager .887 save percentage in his first seven games this year, Knight stopped 45 of 46 saves in his last start Thursday.
“Of course, it’s important,” Lundell said. “We can always trust them. They’ve saved some games for us, too.”
Panthers have 3 good pairs
Still, the three defensive pairings are at the heart of what Florida has done so far this year. The Connauton-Montour pairing has played above expectations and actually has the best expected goals percentage of the three, and the Gudas-Forsling pair has been a solid second grouping, but the Ekblad-Weegar duo is the engine.
Last year, the two defensemen formed one of the best pairings in the league before Ekblad fractured his leg in March, prematurely ending his season. Ekblad was a contender for the James Norris Memorial Trophy at the time of the injury and Weegar wound up getting votes when he emerged as a breakout star in Ekblad’s absence.
A year later, Ekblad ranks fourth in the league in defensive point share and Weegar is 12th. Ekblad, who was gearing up to return last postseason if Florida reached the 2021 Stanley Cup Finals, actually leads the team in point shares, and is one of only two players in the league with at 1.5 offensive and defensive point shares.
No one sums up the Panthers’ two-way identity better than their star defenseman.
“I’m not surprised,” Brunette said. “You always keep your fingers crossed, but you knew he was going to do everything possible to get back to that level.”
This story was originally published November 22, 2021 at 5:31 PM.
